On-Premises Dynamics CRM 2013 Coming Later This Month

Dynamics CRM 2013, the premises-based version of Microsoft's latest customer relationship management (CRM) offering, will become generally available for purchase on Oct. 31, Microsoft announced on Monday.

Microsoft partners will also be able to offer hosted versions of Dynamics CRM 2013 to their customers on Oct. 31. Dynamics CRM Online 2013, the Microsoft-hosted version of Dynamics CRM 2013, has been generally available worldwide since early October.

Microsoft also plans to release Dynamics CRM 2013 apps for Windows Phone, iPhone and Android-based smartphones within 30 days after general availability. The company released native touch-optimized apps for Windows 8 and iPad tablet devices earlier this month.

Collaboration with InsideView
Microsoft also on Monday announced it was collaborating with Dynamics partner and social intelligence provider InsideView to deliver its InsideView for Sales solution as a built-in feature in Dynamics CRM Online 2013 called "Social Insights." The feature will be available starting on Oct. 30 at no cost to Dynamics CRM Online Professional users. Microsoft plans to roll out the feature to more users in 2014.

The Social Insights feature uses InsideView's technology to gather real-time data on a company -- such as key contacts, employee head count, financial information, acquisition history and product offerings -- from over 30,000 online sources in a single view. InsideView automatically synchronizes data from its cloud to the CRM Online cloud, so the information is kept up-to-date.

[Click on image for larger view.]The new Social Insights feature in Dynamics CRM Online 2013.

By providing CRM Online users quick access to this information, Microsoft and InsideView are aiming to help increase their productivity and improve their efficiency in dealing with prospects and clients, according to Umberto Milletti, CEO and founder of InsideView.

"One of the key things [CRM users] need to do is to be able to understand their market, their customers, their prospects," Milletti said in a phone interview. "And until this relationship [with Microsoft], it was really a separate effort that the customer had to go through to go and try to pull market information into CRM, to try to assemble financial data, social data, user data. And we thought -- with Microsoft -- that that was really something that didn't really make a lot of sense in the market, that our users wanted to be able to see real-time information as they were using CRM so they can see what was happening to their prospects."

"If you think of the early wave of cloud computing, the first wave was about getting solutions that run in the cloud. What we're doing with InsideView is ushering a new era of innovation because of the cloud," added Bill Patterson, senior director strategy and planning for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. "[We're] really innovating in a way that understands CRM information is ubiquitously available on the Web today. We're using InsideView to harness all that information and compute the context and insight needed to push it right into the desktop of the CRM user."

The Social Insights feature will be available natively in Dynamics CRM Online, but InsideView does offer a separate product for on-premises deployments.

Microsoft is holding a "virtual event" for the Dynamics CRM 2013 launch on Nov. 4. Those interested can register for the event here.